On the foggy morning of July 25, 1909, French aviator Louis Bleriot took off from the coast of France in his fragile, under-powered Model XI monoplane. About 37 minutes later, Bleriot landed on the white cliffs of Dover, England, pulling off the first long-distance flight over water and the first crossing of a national boundary. His courageous feat created a sensation as big as the first Apollo moon landing.
Although, immortalized by his cross-Channel flight, Bleriot’s early struggles as a pioneering designer and test pilot were nearly as remarkable. Surviving nearly a dozen crashes, he improvised his way into the air defying his critics, including his own mother who declared, “Louis has gone completely mad.”
A Daring Flight captures the thrilling formative year of flight, when the French were mad about airplanes and tried everything to fly. It is also a story of present-day flying dreams, as Louis Bleriot’s grandson decides to recreate his grandfather’s epic flight in a nearly identical—now antique—aircraft, with touching and inspiring results.
- PBS
- Color
- Approximently 60 minutes